To Whom It May Concern
by irma66
Summary: Major's not liking his new job much.


_It should come as no surprise to anyone who follows me on Tumblr that I was less than thrilled with the events of S4, especially the last two episodes. Liv is not a hero and the seemingly earnest attempts to portray her as such were perplexing. Chase was not a bad guy; the show went out of its way to show more depth to him and his hard choices than in anyone else on screen, then they just tossed all of that writing away at the end. Also perplexing._

 _I don't really see a way for the show to get out of the hole they've dug, with their main character now so immensely unlikable, but if they could acknowledge that fact, then try to fix it, I might actually watch again. In trying to reach that place for myself, I came up with this._

* * *

Major feels like a ghost, haunting the halls of the Fillmore Graves' offices. He remembers finding Chase sitting in the dark, drinking alone, on more than one occasion in the last several months, something Major now understands more than he wants to.

It's been two weeks since the Brother Love riots, two weeks since the executions, two weeks since Seattle had been cut off from any public sources of support following what the outside media was gleefully trumpeting as "a zombie coup". Two weeks since Major began to understand why Chase drank alone in the dark, and why he'd looked so stressed whenever he thought no one was watching.

They'd been so confident as they cut a deal with the biggest scumbag in town to supply brains to the zombies slowly starving in isolated Seattle. At this point, he really isn't sure why they'd felt that way. Chase had had Blaine under his thumb for a time, so why they thought they'd had some brilliant, original idea to set Blaine up as their sole supplier and call it good is beyond him now. _Of course_ Chase had at least investigated that avenue before, but even back at the start of this debacle, Blaine's brain sources had only been adequate for his smaller operations, not for feeding the entire population. On top of that, Fillmore Graves isn't exactly bringing in the mercenary income from the outside world these days, so their access to funds is dwindling, some accounts simply frozen, and, too late, Major had realized that the increased security beyond the wall made even Blaine's less-than-legal avenues of transport unreliable.

Unfortunately, he'd committed the company to covering Blaine's debts before he knew what kind of money that entailed, and before anyone knew whether he could actually be successful. Replacing all the "legal" means of brain procurement wasn't as easy a task as they'd thought it would be two weeks ago. Major is all too aware that he should have considered that before agreeing to an alliance with Blaine, but he realized later that he'd still been pumped up from going zombie earlier that day, and in shock from everything that had transpired, so he hadn't really put enough thought into what he was agreeing to. Not exactly the strongest start to his new role as the leader of 'Zeattle'.

He'd voiced those thoughts to Liv a couple days earlier and the outcome had been her screaming at him and storming away. Actually, the screaming and storming had been more due to him commenting that he could understand now what kind of pressure Chase had been under. That was what set Liv off initially.

" _You're sympathizing with that muscle-bound Hitler? He murdered my boyfriend."_

 _Major blanched at her vehemence. He hated upsetting her, but he had to make her understand. "No, Liv, really, he didn't. Whether you like to admit it or not, he executed a criminal. For a crime that had been clearly announced to be a capital offense, punishable by death. And with good reason, Liv. We haven't been able to feed the zombies we have. Making more endangers everyone. Zombies and humans. It's insanity."_

 _She bristled and clenched her fists. "Well, maybe you just should have let him murder me too, since I'm the one who actually did the deed."_

 _"No, I couldn't do that. I just wish..."_

 _"What, Major? What do you wish?" She was shouting now, and he hated it._

 _"Look, let's just cool it. What's done is done. We don't need—"_

 _"What's done is done?!" He stepped back at her shriek. "You're just fine with the fact that that bastard murdered Levon, aren't you? You wanted him out of the way anyway. You'd just drugged me so I'd think I was in love with you again. Rapey much? Too bad you picked the brain of a little woman who stood up for herself, huh?"_

 _"Liv, I told you. I'm sorry about that. It was a bad choice. I just felt like I needed to get you out of town. If I could do it over, I'd—"_

 _"What? Turn me in yourself? Or do you just mean you'd look for a more willing brain to feed me?"_

 _"No, no, no." He spread his hands to his sides, imploring her with his most earnest face to listen, although he was running out of hope that she would. "I just wish there'd been time to de-escalate the whole situation. Chase is...was...a fairly reasonable guy. He had to have been really pressed to have rushed to schedule executions so quickly. I'd been out of pocket, because of what happened to Jordan, so I don't know what was going on here."_

 _"You just need to stop. He was not a reasonable guy. He was a monster. If you can't see that..." She stopped, a fierce glare on her face. "I'm done arguing with you. I've gotta get home and start going through applications."_

 _"Applications?"_

 _"You said I could make as many zombies as I can. Now it's just a matter of getting them past the sentinels on the other side of the wall." Her look turned smug. "We got them past Fillmore Graves; we'll figure out the U.S. Army."_

 _"Liv, no." He didn't want her upset, but this wasn't something he could afford to negotiate. "When I said that, I thought we had a way to get enough brains in. That hasn't worked out, so you need to stop creating more zombies."_

 _"What?" She was shouting again. "You can't stop me. This is what I'm supposed to do."_

 _Now_ he _was incredulous. "What do you mean, what you're supposed to do? Do you think you've got some kind of zombie calling...like Angus did?"_

 _"Of course not; he was crazy. I'm saving people."_

 _He turned away from her, walking to Chase's...his...desk, and sitting down with a groan. "Really, Liv, how do you figure? You turn a terminally ill person into a zombie, so they're only kinda dead. Then, we have to kill some healthy humans to feed them. Do you not see a tiny flaw in your logic?" He scoffed loudly, shaking his head. "We don't have the incoming brains we need right now. The zombies already in town are starving. You have to stop. Or the zombie residents of Seattle are going to start snacking on their human neighbors. Maybe on Clive and his new wife. Maybe on Peyton. Is that what you want?"_

 _He wasn't even sure what the noise she made then was. Equal parts rage and frustration. She looked around her furiously, then grabbed something off the table next to her and hurled it at him. Whatever it was missed him by a mile, but from the loud thunk against the wall, he expected there to be a dent. Then she whirled and started for the door._

 _"Don't make any more zombies, Liv," he called after her._

 _"Stop me," she growled before flipping him off and disappearing down the hallway._

 _He screamed out his aggravation, then dropped his head into his hands. "I am so fucked."_

He hasn't seen or heard from Liv since. Major glances up from his aimless wandering through the halls of Fillmore Graves and finds himself back at his new office. He stumbles inside and slumps onto the sofa. He's not sure who had it worse: Chase trying to keep order while almost everyone schemed behind his back, or himself, with the person he cares about most defying him right in front of his face.

* * *

Major awakens with a start, not immediately recognizing his surroundings. He'd fallen asleep on the office sofa, still sitting up, and his head had dropped into a position that makes his neck muscles scream at him as he straightens. Being a zombie might keep you alive when you should be dead, but it doesn't keep things from hurting. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and glances at the screen. No calls—no texts–03:47 AM.

He stands slowly, still rotating his head to work out the painful kink, and makes his way to the desk – _his_ desk, whether he wants it or not. In a choice between Liv and Chase, he knew that he would always have picked Liv; she's too engrained in him for that to ever change, whether they actually like each other at any given time or not. He just wishes it hadn't come to that, and he truly doesn't think that it had to. Things just escalated so much, so fast, and the scene at the end was just too out-of-control. If only he hadn't been away in those last couple of days, nursing Jordan back to health, after that last Fillmore Graves' 'office party'.

And what a royal shit show that had been. First off, a bit premature since their prisoner hadn't even made it back to headquarters yet, and when Russ's escape had been revealed, Chase had simply been disciplining in the manner in which he'd become accustomed with zombie soldiers–non-lethal shots to teach them a lesson that would not be forgotten. Fisher had never seen that form of discipline though, and he'd reacted like anyone not in the know would: firing back at the guy shooting his girlfriend. Unfortunately, Chase's default setting to threats was to neutralize, and he'd put down that particular threat with a single shot. As he would have with Jordan, if he'd actually meant any permanent harm to her.

Major's guilt over everything that happened that day has been overwhelming; he'd brought them into Fillmore Graves to try to protect them, get them out of their dead-end existences, like any good youth counselor would. He just hadn't realized that his good intentions would turn out so very, very wrong.

Going home and going to sleep seems pointless, so he sits down at the desk. Ravi's probably at Peyton and Liv's since Major had recommended that he stay over at their apartment as much as possible. With the brain supply dwindling, there's so much risk of humans being attacked these days, and Ravi's zombie tendencies are only intermittent, so they all feel better about security in numbers. Especially for pure-human Peyton, who's at the greatest risk in their circle. Clive and Dale are obviously together; it is technically their honeymoon after all. They're both well armed, and well aware of exactly what they need to do to defend against a zombie attack, so Major hasn't really been worrying much about them. They probably haven't been having anyone's idea of a dream honeymoon, but there are far worse alternatives.

Major boots up the computer, ready to resume his review of the Fillmore Graves files. He's spent hours poring over Chase's documents, trying to get a crash course in how to manage an army, a corporation, a city, and a species, all at once. Chase had had access to all of his division chiefs' files as well, both military and civilian, so now Major has access to all of that information also. After days spent perusing document after document, all he really knows for sure is just how impossible this job is going to be. Always had been, frankly. It's a wonder that Chase managed to keep things even partially under control for as long as he had.

After an hour of reading up on 'civilian-military relations in an occupied area', he's ready to sleep again. There was a reason he'd been a social worker. Human relations he can handle. Learning to do it at the end of a gun had been unpleasant and he's now finding that managing the people with the guns is even worse. At least with Chase in charge, there was always someone else to pass the difficult situations on to. Now Major's the guy in charge and he grows less thrilled with the concept every day.

Major settles back onto the sofa, in a more comfortable position this time, and tries to shut his thoughts down enough to sleep. However, the AC chooses that moment to kick on, and he shivers as cold air blows down onto him. Grumbling a little, he pushes upright and moves to the coat closet. He has no idea where the AC controls are, but he knows there's a blanket on the top shelf that will keep the chill off.

As he opens the closet door to reach for the blanket, he's assaulted by the scent of Chase from the clothes he'd kept hanging there. The desk chair has finally lost the spicy, leathery smell that Major associates with his former commander but the closed door has apparently been hiding another guilty reminder of how messed up everything got. Major grabs the blanket and slams the door shut quickly, making a mental note to get someone to clear the closet for him the next day.

As he walks back to the couch, he shakes the blanket out, hoping Chase never actually used it. The chair had been bad enough, but he's certain that sleeping under a blanket imbued with the smell of Chase Graves' shaving cream will cause guilty nightmares. A clattering sound rings out and he assumes he's knocked something off the side table with the blanket, but nothing seems to be missing from the table top. Major tosses the blanket onto the sofa and searches around him for anything on the floor. Still seeing nothing, he drops onto his knees and peers under the furniture, finally spotting a small object beneath the sofa, flat and rectangular.

"What is that?"

He snakes his hand into the narrow space, but can't get a grip on it, so he gives it a flick instead, sending the mystery item skidding out the back of the sofa. He pushes himself to his feet and moves around to where he discovers a flash drive. He stoops and picks it up.

"A flash drive wrapped in a blanket hiding in a closet?" He squints at the piece of plastic in his hand. "That's weird."

All of the materials that he's been going through have been on the company's internal drives. Fillmore Graves' IT policies forbade the use of portable data storage to avoid loss of the company's proprietary information. It looks like someone may have been circumventing that policy, although why they would hide the evidence in Chase's office is difficult to fathom. Major considers Chase's paranoia that there were still people in the company working against him. Maybe they thought that setting him up with confidential company information on a forbidden flash drive would cause the Board of Directors to suspect their CEO of some kind of wrongdoing? That seemed like a long shot but it's all he can think of.

"So let's find out," he says and turns back toward the desk. He isn't going to figure out this mystery without taking a look at the drive.

Major slides the flash drive into a USB port and boots up the computer again before sitting heavily in front of the monitor. "Okay, what do we have here?"

A pop-up appears, offering various tasks to be performed on the drive, which shows its name as 'C. Graves - In the Event'. Major frowns. The drive was Chase's? Maybe that makes sense, since it's in his office, but why was it hidden? Surely he wasn't smuggling information out. That really didn't make sense. Maybe Chase had been right about someone being out to get him.

Major opens the listing of what is saved to the drive, and is surprised again when it contains only one item, a video file, with a save date of about two months earlier.

"To Whom It May Concern," he reads aloud. "What is this?"

He double-clicks the item and waits for it to load. The clocking icon spins for about thirty seconds, then the video window pops up with Chase frozen on screen, eyes pinning Major in place. If the smell of the man coming from the closet earlier in the evening hadn't made him feel bad enough, the actual sight of his now-dead boss–and kinda friend–is downright painful. He sits for a moment, staring at Chase's image. He's in one of the Fillmore Graves polo shirts that he'd taken to wearing for a while, trying to minimize the military look. He'd recommended that Major do the same, to try to lessen the sting of martial law and build rapport by looking more like a member of the community than an invading force.

Major shakes his head. That tactic had never really worked. Liv and those like her are clear evidence of that. Even when they aren't technically human any longer, the natural human tendency to rebel against what you're told you must do and how you must behave—to rebel against 'The Man'—is still awfully strong. Major pinches the bridge of his nose tightly between his fingers as a distressing thought occurs to him.

"I'm 'The Man' now."

He has no idea how he's going to make this work; Chase had been much better at this role and look how it turned out for him. He could go ahead and let everyone do whatever they want, like Liv expects him to, but how will that feed the masses? The growing masses, if he lets her have her way. And how would they ever fix this mess? He shakes his head again. He's got no answers, and he knows Chase hadn't either, but it can't hurt to see what he had to say in his secret message. Major expands the video to full screen and pushes the play icon. The screen goes dark, then Chase appears again, seeming to fuss with the computer, before looking straight into the webcam, shaking his head, and laughing.

" _Oh, this is weird,"_ Chase says. _"I mean, I've seen this kind of thing in movies, but doing it..."_ His brow furrows and he gives his head a little shake. _"Okay, here goes."_

As Major watches, Chase straightens in the seat in which Major now sits, folding his arms on the table in front of him and slipping on his commanding officer face, the one that says, 'I'm not taking your bullshit'.

" _So, it is my belief that if you're viewing this, I'm probably dead, and you're likely the one who killed me."_

Major's hand spasms on the mouse, freezing the screen as he reels back, shocked to his core at those words. He has avoided the thought that he was responsible for Chase's death, it was Liv who pushed the button after all, but with Chase seemingly staring him down, he can't hide anymore. If not for Major, Chase would still be alive.

"But Liv would be dead," he mutters to himself, but he's spent enough time second-guessing how everything went down to know that wasn't a certainty.

Better choices on a lot of people's parts, including his own, might have changed things dramatically. He could have gone to Chase to plead for mercy for Liv; he knew Chase had an inexplicable soft spot for her, even though she openly treated him like shit on her shoe after their indiscretion the night the house party blew up. Any approach that hadn't involved an open attack would probably have had a better outcome, and he probably wouldn't be the sucker in charge of everything right now.

"Too late now," Major sighs. "Man up and hear what he has to say. You owe him that much." His hand shakes over the mouse, then he firmly presses the rewind button to the point where no-nonsense Chase appears, then hits play again.

" _So, it is my belief that if you're viewing this, I'm probably dead, and you're likely the one who killed me. Maybe not you directly, but someone under your command."_

Major snorts at the idea that Liv is ever under anyone's command.

 _"If these were ordinary times, and I was battling another military force, I'd expect that you already know that whatever your troops do emparts to you. But since I doubt that the U.S. military has attacked us, at least not in a way that doesn't leave the Pacific Northwest a smoking heap of radioactivity, with my flash drive at the bottom of it, that means that you're probably an opposing faction from within the organization. I guess you could be from outside the company instead; maybe you're from one of these groups that doesn't like all the rules I've been forcing on the populace right now. I get it, trust me, I'm as American as you, at least I assume so, and being told what to do on this scale is tough to swallow. We'll agree to all kinds of nutty things when they come in small doses, lessening our freedoms piece by piece. But the idea of martial law...pretty sure that's never going to be popular on American soil."_

Chase cocks his head at the webcam, his mouth crooking up in a grin. _"Yeah, I'm getting off track. This isn't supposed to be a philosophical discussion. I guess you can forgive me for going off message; I am dead after all."_

This seems to amuse him immensely and he laughs. Major grimaces at the sound. How can he joke like this?

 _"I wrote a letter."_ Chase raises a piece of paper sitting in front of him, shaking it gently. _"It's easier to stay on track in writing. In this video version, the sheer ridiculousness of this exercise is distracting. For you, I probably am dead, or at the very least frozen, so it's probably hard to reconcile how amusing I seem to find this whole thing. All I can say is, you try to record a message to be heard after you're probably dead, and see how easy it is for you."_ He shakes the paper again.

 _"Okay, let's try it this way..."_ He clears his throat and focuses on the paper.

" _To Whom It May Concern,"_ he begins, eyes meeting the camera as he smirks again. His expression reminds Major of the day Chase made him eat brains while he was still pretending to be a zombie.

 _"So, this is what dead feels like. I'm sure I must be—"_ He shrugs. _"—dead, I mean. If you've found my final missive, there's not that many other options. Or, I guess maybe I could be frozen, that's a very viable possibility in today's insanity. Not entirely sure which I'd prefer. Which is kinda weird; I've always found some reason to keep fighting the fight, no matter what._

 _"The thing is though, in this brave new world, I've been aware from the very beginning that choosing to take on this leadership role, keeping things working for all of us, was likely going to end up with me on a slab. I guess it has, and now it's your turn. No matter what ends up happening to Seattle, even if something miraculous happens and everyone gets turned human again, someone always has to be held accountable for what went wrong before that miracle, and the guy in charge tends to get that job."_

Chase glances up at the camera again, one eyebrow raised, and he seems to go off script.

 _"That's you now, by the way."_ He looks down at the piece of paper in his hand again.

 _"If I had any sense, I would have walked away once I knew how far Carey Gold had gone to push Plan B. I mean, she arranged Vivian's death, tried to kill me, and basically poisoned half of Seattle. And once I killed her, she managed to leave me holding the bag. She told me there were a lot more of her people in the organization and I'm pretty sure that was true. There have been too many problems for all of my people to actually be my people. Ha, I guess they're your people now. Good luck with that._

 _"So now the bag's in your hands. It's almost worth being dead to know the man (or woman) who made that happen is now standing in the same pile of steaming crap that I've been in all these months. You probably think you've won something, in charge of all of Seattle now. Trust me, it ain't what it's cracked up to be. This isn't your typical CEO situation, where they pay you a shit-ton of money, and you come in, supposedly to clean up whatever mess your predecessor left you, only to find out that everything's way too fucked up to fix. You gotta know, everything probably is too fucked up to fix, but at least those guys usually get another shit-ton of severance before they get to head off into the sunset. You should know right now, there's no sunset. Not a good one anyway. You're holding the bag, and there's every chance that it's going to eventually end up over your head. If you're lucky._

 _"The thing is, if I'm right, and you're in my office reading this because you've taken me out of the equation and assumed control, I should probably be glad that you've unknowingly fucked yourself. Mostly though, I think I feel sorry for you. I hope you actually know what you got yourself into. This is a thankless, impossible role you've taken by force. I could laugh at your misfortune, should laugh, but what's the point? It's not getting me my head back."_

Major shudders as his last image of Chase, the one he does his best not to think about, floods his brain. He hits the pause button and cradles his head in his hands, trying to get his control back. After a moment, he looks up and focuses on the picture of Chase frozen in front of him. Back when he was still alive...still breathing...still intact. The guilt is bad, but compounding it with the horror of the scene on that last day is more than he can deal with right now. The wicked smirk is gone from Chase's face, although one side of his mouth is still drawn up in a half smile, but he looks resigned now, instead of amused. Major realizes just how often Chase had looked like that in the last couple of months. Now that he knows what his commander had been thinking all that time, that his days were numbered, no matter what action he took, no matter how hard he tried to make the best choices, that look of resignation makes a lot more sense. And makes what had ended up happening even harder to take.

He drops his head into his hands again. "I am so, so sorry," he mumbles under his breath. "I wish..." Major stops, viciously pushing that thought away, and shaking his head as he straightens in Chase's chair. There's no point in wishing. What's done is done. Now he has to do what Chase had been doing and try to get everyone through this mess. He presses his lips together in a grim line and hits play again.

" _So here's the point of this little note. I've spent a lot of time trying to get all the people of Seattle, human and zombie, through this clusterfuck, and although it seems counter-intuitive to be giving the guy who killed me advice, I'm going to do it anyway. This is about more than just me, or just you. It's about everyone trapped in here trying to survive. I seem to have lost my life trying to keep them safe, which sucks, but I don't like the idea of the gains I did make being lost in an unfriendly transition. I understand why you might be hesitant to take advice from a guy you just killed, but my priority continues to be the people under my care, and I hope you feel at least a little of the same._

 _"On my desktop, is a link entitled 'Desert Survival Tactics'. I don't know if you've looked at it or not; there isn't much call for information of that nature in this current environment so my guess is no. Even if you did, you'd have to get all the way to the end before you'd find another link, and that is a really long, really boring document. That's why I picked it. The link will take you to a private cloud account, password is Harrison7815. You'll find detailed accounts of the various actions we've got pending. Barring some unforeseen situation, they'll probably be up to date within a day or two of whatever happened to get me out of my office and you in it. I do intend to continue to update the information on this account. At the very least, you'll be able to see who's working on what, who's been identified as working with forces hostile to the company's stated plan of action, and any ongoing stings or covert operations. As I write this, we've got three different operations in play. One is trying to prevent forces beyond the wall from simply nuking the city, another is trying to pinpoint the leak in our brain distribution chain, and the last one relates to the human/zombie smuggling that has become rampant. These may all be wrapped up by the time you get to the account, but I anticipate there will be others. It gets pretty busy around here."_

Chase pauses then, looking away from the camera like he's trying to make a decision. His expression had morphed into what Major always thought of as his business face as he outlined the details of his parting gift; it looked like talking strategy had probably distracted him from the thoughts of impending doom. With that task complete though, he looks like the thoughts of mortality are back. He smiles again, but it's grim, and to Major, he looks worried.

 _"So, one final thought before I leave you to manage your own destruction. Lilywhite. He's not really a soldier, or a Major for that matter."_ Chase gives a low chuckle. _"In the real world, he was a social worker, and that informs a lot of his choices, but he's proven himself to be loyal and when you give him a job, he does his best to get things done. However things ended for me, if you genuinely are working for the best interests of the city, I think you can probably convince him to work with you. I hope that you didn't just execute him because he's been working closely with me. I'm probably going to be feeling guilty from the afterlife if that was the case. Show him this message if you need to; it might convince him to work with you since I was willing to, in spite of everything."_

Major groans as Chase mentions that he would feel guilty if Major had been executed simply for his loyalty. He presses his fingers against his temples, wondering how Chase would feel now, knowing that Major's loyalty had only gone so far and it was his disloyalty that had ended Chase's life. He's probably looking at a lifetime of haunting if ghosts are as real a supernatural being as zombies have turned out to be.

Chase puts the paper he's holding down on the desk and folds his hands in front of him again, his smile lightening once more. _"I thought seriously of closing with, 'Sincerely, The Breakfast Club' but that seems a little too..."_ He raises his hand beside his face, fingers splaying like he's grasping for something in the air. " _I don't know, too something. And who knows, maybe no one ever views this because we all live happily ever after, and I end up getting to do what retired CEOs do most of the time...take my payout somewhere warm and drink margaritas and pick up sexy locals. I do enjoy sexy locals. That sounds like a much better outcome than what I'm expecting. Or maybe I won't get that, but you will. I'm not sure if I hope there's a view of the world from the Great Beyond or not so I get to see what ends up happening here. I do hope that I'll get to see my brother again. If I do, and I find out who murdered him, maybe I'll try to send you some kind of message. The least you can do for me is avenge my brother, right?"_

Major finds himself nodding at Chase's questioning tone. He absolutely can do that, although from what little he'd heard about Harrison Graves' death, he's always been a little suspicious of Blaine, who happens to be one of Major's 'allies' at this point. Things might get a little awkward if he's right, but he'd made a solid effort to kill Blaine before; he won't mind doing it again.

 _"Okay, so with that, I'm going to wrap this up. Wherever I am, I'm hoping for the best outcome in this mess and that one of us, whether it's me or you, can find that best outcome without too much more bloodshed. I'll admit, I'm not that optimistic anymore, but who knows. Anything's possible if you work hard enough. Better get to work."_

Chase grins then, the full smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes, as he raises his hand in salute, then the screen goes dark. Major throws himself back in his chair, running his hands over his face and up into his hair.

"Oh, I am so fucked."

* * *

It takes Major twenty minutes to pull himself together. He watches Chase's video again, then goes hunting for the hidden link. Chase had been true to his word, keeping the account up-to-date with the latest information. Russ Roche's capture, and subsequent escape, were documented, as was Chase's outline of the events that ended with Fisher's death. He admitted to making a bad choice with his shooting of Jordan, and then expressed regret over what happened next with Fisher. The next entry is an ugly surprise: information as to the defection of his most trusted lieutenant, Major himself, based on a recording received from Hobbs. Major grimly reads Chase's account of that conversation and makes a mental note to deal with Hobbs as soon as possible. Chase's extreme behavior at the end suddenly seems much more...at least understandable, and Major is happy to push some of his guilt at what had happened to Chase into fury at Hobbs.

The information about Major's betrayal is the last entry in the account. Everything had probably been moving too quickly after that for Chase to sit down and write in his secret, 'managing the world' diary. Major pushes back in the chair again, trying to figure out what to do next. Hobbs is, at the least, going into the deep freeze, before he undermines anything else. There had been other speculation in the account about other Fillmore Graves' personnel, but Major knows that he needs to investigate each allegation. If he were to take all of Chase's suspicions at face value, Major himself would be labeled a saboteur as well. It's certainly possible that others who had caught Chase's attention could have been similarly set up.

First though, Major has a bigger problem: Liv. She's become convinced of the fundamental 'rightness' of her plan to turn anyone who wanted to be a zombie and that's simply not sustainable, Honestly, it doesn't even make sense. He knows that everyone in her circle had rallied around her to save her life, and in the process, she had achieved some sort of outlaw folk hero status in the community. He's also pretty certain that attitude was only going to last so long in the zombie neighborhoods as they progressively starved, but right now, it's sustaining her insistence that she was right. He's fairly certain that with the imminent threat to her resolved, he would be able to persuade her friends to help him talk her away from this 'calling'. Their whole group is law enforcement, except Peyton, who's now an actual government official; he has to believe that they'll see the need for the rule of law once they aren't concerned for Liv's life.

Major looks at the computer screen. 06:25 AM. It's probably early, but he can still hear Chase's voice in this head. _Better get to work._ He pulls his phone out of his pocket and hits a name that's more Liv's friend than his, but is the person he most expects to see reason.

 _"Major, what the hell. It's the middle of the night."_

"It's really not. You're just exhausted after sexing your new wife up all night."

Clive's voice is still husky with sleep, but he sounds amused. _"Maybe I was doing that right now. And you interrupted us. Not cool, man. Why are you calling me anyway?"_

"I really hope you're not. Never answer the phone when you're doing that. No phone call's important enough for that."

 _"Okay, yeah, you're right, we were sleeping, not...anything else. So, why are you calling me so early? We're technically still on our honeymoon, so whatever we're doing, calls at the crack of dawn are not cool."_

"I've got some things I want to run by you. Trying to keep this city on its feet is a lot of work. I could really use your help. Dale's too, if she's available."

 _"Umm, anything in particular?"_

"A few things. I'd rather talk them out in person. Maybe around 10:00 AM today? Does that work for you guys?"

Clive hums out a speculative tone. _"Hmmm...I guess. If you let me go back to sleep right now."_

"You're awake now. And I bet Dale is too. Don't waste time sleeping. Life's too precious."

 _"You know, you might be right. See you at 10."_

Major smiles as he thumbs the phone off. Convince everyone to help him stage an intervention for Liv. Freeze that traitor, Hobbs. Figure out how to convince the U.S. Government to restore their incoming brains channels. And get Ravi some resources to start really working on a large-scale cure. There has to be a way to make everything work.

He stands and moves back to the couch, reclining on it again as he'd started to do so many hours before. He grabs the blanket to shake it out over himself, catching a whiff of the smell that had clung to the desk chair. It's a little painful still, like the closet had been, but it makes him feel a little better too. They'll figure this out. He has a circle of people he knows he could trust; Chase's resources had been so much more limited. He feels bad about that, it hadn't been fair, but it's too late to change anything and they just have to move forward. _Get to work._

* * *

 _Thanks, as always, to EllieBear, my iZombie partner in crime._


End file.
